win some, lose some —

Apple, LG dodge Alcatel-Lucent’s patent bullet

French telecom Alcatel-Lucent has lost a patent case against Apple and LG that it hoped might bring a much-needed cash infusion. In a trial that began November 27, lawyers representing Multimedia Patent Trust (MPT), a subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent, had asked a San Diego jury to award their client $172 million in patent royalties from Apple and another $9.1 million from LG, according to a Bloomberg report on the trial.

Apple's win against Alcatel-Lucent and MPT came on the same day that a Delaware jury dealt the Cupertino company a significant loss, finding that iPhones did infringe three patents owned by a holding company, which in turn is partly owned by Sony and Nokia.

MPT claimed its patents were infringed by a wide array of products, including Apple's iPhones, iPods, iPads, and MacBooks, as well as LG products like the Chocolate Touch VX8575, Bliss UX700, and Lotus Elite LX610.

Alcatel-Lucent has been struggling financially for some time now, and has been on the patent warpath for several years. A brief history: Lucent Technologies was created in 1998 when AT&T spun off its famous Bell Labs, along with other assets. In 2006, Lucent sued Microsoft for patent infringement; shortly after filing that suit, it merged with French telecom Alcatel, which carried on the litigation.

The lawsuit against Microsoft turned into a battle royale over audio and video encoding technologies. In 2007, Alcatel-Lucent won a $1.5 billion verdict against Microsoft; it was the largest patent verdict ever, but it was overturned post-trial. The two companies also sparred over video compression technology, including MPEG-2 and some types of MPEG-4 encoding; all the litigation was settled confidentially a few years ago.

Alcatel-Lucent's slew of patent lawsuits is a sad ending to the storied legacy of Bell Labs. In a better world, this newest setback would cause the company to reconsider its ways; but that seems unlikely.

The original lawsuit, filed in 2010 [PDF] also included Canon and TiVo as defendants. TiVo settled the case in 2011. Canon won its case on summary judgment last month.

I'm always glad to see a patent case going down the drain, it's just too bad that it affects the company my dad works for. The Alcatel-Lucent firm where he works has 170 employees and they are about to fire 45...

I'm always glad to see a patent case going down the drain, it's just too bad that it affects the company my dad works for. The Alcatel-Lucent firm where he works has 170 employees and they are about to fire 45...

This is the reason all patent cases should be brought to trial and decided by Judge/Jury we could have prevented this case if Tivo fought it.

Unfortunately, the party that decides to go through with the litigation will spend a ton of money on attorney's fees. You are correct though; eventually someone will bite the bullet rather than settling.

Glad to see this. The patent wars are having such a negative effect the tech industry. I'd like to see Apple getting held to the same type of agreement. Not only does it impede competition but innovation as well. I read a great article about this on http://trademarkshop.ca recently, definitely worth a look.